Roger Clarke’s Waltzing Matilda Home-Page

Australia's national song gets a lot of attention, and this is the best place
on the Web to look for information about it. The hit-rate on this site is running
at about 200,000 p.a., and the song's frequent use at sporting events (tennis,
the Olympics, the Rugby Union World Cup, etc.) keeps driving more people here.

STOP PRESS: Waltzing Matilda Day is held annually in Winton. In
2013, it's on Saturday 6 April.
A Dinner
is held at the North Gregory
Hotel, where the song was first publicly performed
in 1895.
Contact Col Kenna, North Gregory Hotel, 0438 288 896, cgkenna@bigpond.net.au

A Tribute to Richard (Dick) Magoffin

We all owe a great debt of gratitude to Richard Magoffin
(1937-2006), who was the source of a great deal of the valuable cultural
history wapped up in the song. He passed away on 4 May 2006. His son Bill informs
me that his research material and many items from his display are now in
the National Library in Canberra.

This page contains a lot of information and a lot of links to more pages on
this site, and to pages provided by many other people and organisations.
Acknowledgements
and
administrative
notes are at the end of the document. The things that most visitors seem
to be looking for are:

This was the first source of information about the song made to be made
available on the Web, in February 1995. Others have been created since, but
I'm sticking with my claim that it's 'the original and the best'. The
Australian
National Library launched an excellent, if somewhat official-looking site
in 2003.

and here's a section listing my
acknowledgements
to the people who discovered all this knowledge. (I did no original research;
I just searched for and organised information that had been gathered by others)

Versions

The song as it's sung today is not the same as it is was
originally written. The story is complicated, and has been difficult to sort
out. If there's anything in here you can improve on, please
tell
me about it.

The words were written by Banjo Paterson, and the score by Christina
Macpherson, at Dagworth Station near Winton, in January 1895.
It is thought to have been first performed publicly at the North Gregory Hotel
in Winton, on 6 April 1895, apparently at a banquet for the Premier of
Queensland.

I have yet to discover when this version was first published. Richard Magoffin
was reported by ABC News on 22 August 2003 as saying that "It was first
published on leaflets, just the words only, in 1902 in The Hughenden
Advertiser. But it was first published as a song in Sydney by James Inglis and
Company of Billy Tea - they published it to advertise their tea". (The words
in The Hughenden Advertiser in 1902 would have been Banjo's originals. But the
song published by James Inglis & Co. in 1903 was set to a different tune,
with adapted words, and with a significantly changed chorus. That's the 'Marie
Cowan' version, as explained
below).

Christina
is said to have believed she was playing a tune she'd heard a few months
earlier. A letter she wrote in 1931 provides some information about the event.
She couldn't remember the name of the tune, but played it from memory.
Paterson liked its 'whimsicality and dreaminess', and decided to write some
words for it. (So a plausible interpretation is that Banjo was being polite to
his girlfriend's mate, and passed the time by running off a bit of doggerel to
fit the metre of the tune).

The tune that Christina is supposed to have been remembering was a march
arrangement of a Scottish ballad 'Thou Bonnie Wood o' Criagielea' of about
1818. It had been played at the Warrnambool Annual Steeplechase Meeting in
April 1894, which Christina had attended. (Warrnambool is in western Victoria,
about 1,700 km to the south!).

On the one hand, Christina has been suggested to have had a good ear, and to
have been able to play a rendition of 'Craigielea' from memory. On the other
hand, I'm assured by multiple people who've studied 'Craigielea' that it takes
a skilled musician to find much relationship at all between the tunes of
Christina's
'Waltzing Matilda' and
Robert
Barr's 'Craigielea', and that it would be far easier to say that Christina
composed an original tune. (So perhaps Christina was being self-effacing, knew
it was a new tune, but felt it appropriate to hide her original talents in
deference to the people around her. Remember that this was on a country
property, where quite a few women evidence the same behaviour patterns today
.... Sorry Germaine, but it's true).

For the record, I haven't yet discovered the years of Christina Macpherson's
birth (c. 1870?) or death (c. 1950?), but I understand that she never married,
and is buried in Melbourne (in a grave that was for many years unmarked). But
several descendants of her family have been in communication with me, so it's
very likely that those dates are known.

According to J.J. Fuld ('Book of World Famous Music: Classical, Popular and
Folk', various editions, up to 4th, 1995, Dover, New York), Oscar Mendelsohn
(in 'A Waltz with Matilda' Melbourne, 1966) contended that the tune was
composed by Harry Nathan (1866-1906), an organist at Townsville Cathedral (on
the Queensland coast). This theory appears to be based on Nathan's name
appearing on a manuscript published some time after 1895. The theory isn't
very convincing (and the music may have been a different version anyway).

Here are some sources of the words, score or browser-playable performances:

The first publication of 'Waltzing Matilda' in the form of sheet-music did
not use Christina Macpherson's tune, but a different one attributed to Marie
Cowan; and this is the version that is most commonly played.

According to J.J. Fuld ('Book of World Famous Music: Classical, Popular and
Folk', various editions, up to 4th, 1995, Dover, New York), it was published
in 1903 by Inglis and Co., of 60 & 62 York Street, Sydney.
(The company seems to no longer exist. I have a vague memory of hearing the
name in the 1970s in the context of the beef cattle industry).

The music was stated on that first edition to have been "arranged" by Marie
Cowan, but in later editions she is accredited as the composer. Fuld
attributes this information to Sidney May, 'The Story of 'Waltzing Matilda'"
(Brisbane, 1955), and states that the authorship of Paterson and Cowan has been
established in an Australian court, 'Sydney Daily Telegraph', March 14, 1959,
p. 3. I have not seen either of those sources. (Nor have I seen Fuld. I've
relied on the efforts of yet another correspondent for everything in this and
the preceding paragraph!).

A
Sydney
Morning Herald article on 20 December 2002 suggested that "Cowan was
commissioned to "rejig" 'Waltzing Matilda' to refer to Billy Tea and, in
possibly the first product placement ever, the "Billy" boiled scene was crammed
into the chorus to remind the listener of those finely brewed tea leaves from
Billy Tea. The 1903 sheet music clearly shows 'Billy', not only with a capital
B but in inverted commas to signify its product status". If that's correct,
then the popular version was a result of blatant commercialism, way back in
1903!

The real origins of the tune are very murky. A song called
'The
Gay Fusilier' also uses the same tune. There have been claims that 'The
Gay Fusilier' dates from a century or two earlier, but the earliest evidence
for its existence is during the Boer War in South Africa (c. 1898-1902). That
might seem a long way from Winton. But Banjo Paterson was in South Africa
during the Boer War in 1901-1902, as a war correspondent for The Sydney Morning
Herald and The [Melbourne] Argus.

Did Banjo take the tune to South Africa?? Or did he hear the tune there,
recognise a fairly good fit to his words, bring back a copy or a memory of it,
which Mrs Marie Cowan then arranged, put on paper and later had attributed to
her as a composition?? For Richard Magoffin's view on that, see the section
below on
Parodies
of 'Waltzing Matilda'.

Here are some sources of the words, score or browser-playable performances:

here are what I'm assured are
the
guitar chords for it. (Another version, and a transcription for banjo,
have unfortunately disappeared from their earlier URLs)

the
Digital Tradition Folksong Base at Xerox PARC, including a couple of
different audio formats (but note that Waltzing Matilda is
not a traditional folksong!). This site seems to be
tied up in red tape these days, presumably because of the threatening actions
of the copyright Nazis in RIAA; so try searching at
Mudcat

you'll find many, many recordings on file-sharing/P2P services. These
offer lots of material whose downloading may breach copyright, and lots of
material whose downloading does not breach copyright

24 different sheet-music versions are available from
Allan
& Co. Pty Ltd of Melbourne, aka Allans Music

Richard
Magoffin writes that this was created in Cloncurry in 1907
by Bob Macpherson, and his girlfriend, Josephine Pene, a music teacher. It
also used the original Paterson text. I've never heard this, but have the
impression that it's a variation on the Christina Macpherson tune. I'm unaware
of any transcription or recording of it.

A correspondent by the name of Dennis O'Keefe (presumably the same DO'K as the
singer whose recording is mentioned under performances, and who runs another
Waltzing Matilda site) advises me that it is also called the 'Buderim' version.
Cloncurry is in north-western Queensland, and Buderim in south-eastern
Queensland, whereas Winton is in central-west Queensland, hundreds of
kilometres from both of them.

Miscellania

Here
are some related facts that may (or may not) appeal to you:

'Waltzing Matilda' is the marching tune of the 1st Battalion The Royal
Australian Regiment (1 RAR), based in Townsville. The
ex-member of 1RAR who drew this to my attention said that in the early 1990s
the band ran a book each year on how many times that year they would play the
tune, with the person who guessed closest to the actual number scooping the pool

I understand that the tune (without the words) is the marching song of the
U.S. 1st Marine Division. In 2003, Col Pat Garrett
USMCconfirmed that it was/is played every morning immediately
after The Marines Hymn ('From the Halls of Montezuma . . .') following the
raising of the National colo(u)rs at 0800, and at Divisional parades. Further,
"The Division was raised at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina in early
1941, and became associated with Waltzing Matilda
when the Marines came to Melbourne in early 1943 for rest and
refit following the successful retaking of Guadalcanal, and before it returned
to combat at Cape Gloucester in New Britain in the Northern Solomons in
September of that year"

another American officer advised me in 2003 that "it is also the
unofficial song of the 1st Battalion, 77th Field Artillery, part of the
US 1st Cavalry Division, activated in Australia during WWII. As a
young lieutenant, joining the officer's club at Camp Pelham, Korea, 1961, my
instructions were that I could not join until I had memorized the words,
and the history, and sung the song, unaccompanied, and without even my first
beer, to the assembled officers"

it's been
translated
into Esperanto by Ralph Harry, a distinguished Australian diplomat,
1917-2002. I first heard this from Wim Posthuma, a radio-station operator in
the wilds of Sweden. I was subsequently told about his
obituary
by another visitor to this page, an Australian journalist called Craig Liddell

if you want to see how 'Waltzing Matilda' comes out in other
languages, try submitting it to automatic translators, such as
Free
Translation

the 1971 Australian Children's Picture Book of the Year
Award went to Desmond Digby for 'Waltzing Matilda'

a Pennsylvania story-teller and collector told me in 2003 that he heard it
this way: "In Australia in the nineteenth century, a woman was known as a
'Hilda', as in "I saw him last week in town talkin to a couple ah hildas".
When Europeans were first settling Australia, women were very scarce, and the
few women who were there would not choose to settle down with a swagman, for
many obvious reasons. So, sans companion, the swagman's Hilda was his swagger
stick and tucker bag. When it came time to move on, for any of many reasons,
it was time to 'waltz my Hilda' that is, move on. Waltzing my
Hilda in the changes language brings became 'Waltzing Mathilda'". I've never
heard the word 'Hilda' used like that, and there's no entry in the Macquarie
Dictionary; but it's a pleasant enough idea

An American called Tom Waits has a song that appropriates some of the words
and some of the (popular 'Marie Cowan' version of the) tune. I do hope that he
understands
American
copyright law (:-)} In the words of Macquarie University's David Christian
(who gave me the lead on this one), it's a "Vietnam vet alcoholic down and out
stream of consciousness" song.

Web-sites on Tom Waits are highly unreliable, so if you're trying to find this,
then you're best-advised to use a search-engine with the string <Waits "Tom
Traubert">. The song is on his 'Small Change' album of 1976, and also on a
collection of 1985 called 'Asylum Years'. I gather that Rod Stewart recorded a
variant on his 'Unplugged' album.

'The
Bold / Gay Fusilier' / 'The Rochester Recruiting Sergeant'

Many derivative works use the basic tune of 'Waltzing Matilda', particularly
the more commonly played Marie Cowan version.

A very interesting case is 'The Bold Fusilier', aka 'The Rochester Recruiting
Sergeant', which uses the Marie Cowan version of the tune. In 1998, the
'Waltzing Matilda' authority Richard Magoffin was quoted in
a
Mudcat thread to the following effect:

"There is an English song which pretends to come from the time of the Duke of
Marlborough, 'The Bold (or Gay) Fusilier', but it is really a parody of
'Waltzing Matilda' from the Boer war, which was attended by the fusiliers, by
Banjo Paterson, and many other Australians who sang our song.

"There is no record anywhere of the existence of this song prior to 1900 by way
of any manuscript. The British Museum wrote in 1968 that they had never found
any trace of the song. The British Folk Song and Dance Society had received
many requests but, likewise, found no record.

"The Mayor of Rochester and the editor of the Fusilier's magazine were
challenged some years ago to present pre-Matilda evidence for their song. They
were not able to do so, while insisting that hearsay evidence in England was
sufficient. English folklore authority, Vaughan Williams, considered that the
earlier existence of the song was very doubtful because its language was not
appropriate to the early eighteenth century period it pretended to
represent".

I have two doubts about Richard's analysis. One is that Vaughan Williams'
doubts are about the words, not the tune. The other is that the song that went
to South Africa, presumably with Banjo, would have had to have been Banjo's
original words, with the 'Christina Macpherson' tune. So what came back could
have been much the same words, but to the tune of 'The Gay Fusilier'. (But
that then raises the question as to who invented 'The Gay Fusilier'/'Marie
Cowan' tune during the Boer War! Maybe it was some soldier's corruption of a
South African folk-song??).

Parodies

Whether 'The Bold Fusilier' is a 'steal' from 'Waltzing Matilda' or not,
there have been a few outright parodies of the song, demonstrating various
levels of humour and bad taste. They include:

'Walking
a Bulldog' - a British interpretation (probably by some expatriate
Australian taking the piss out of the poms ...)

a brilliant, 'Politically Correct Waltzing Matilda' is
sung by
John
Shortis & Moya Simpson, who live at Bungendore near Canberra, and who
performed it at the well-known School of Arts Cafe in nearby Queanbeyan in
1995-96. I have a 4-track CD that my daughter found me, with the song on it -
"Proceeds to St Vincent de Paul". But John told me that his brother ,Mark
Shortis, owns the copyright, and I can't track him down; so I don't have
permission to convert it and make it available on the site

a Texan told me in 2003 about a book by a Canadian radar operator who
served during World War II. The book refers to a the tune being sung with the
words "Ops in a Mossie, ops in a Mossie, who'll go on ops in a Mossie with me"
(ops = combat operations, Mossie = Mosquito, a British-built two-seater
aircraft), followed by more verses about "Ops in a Wimpy" (Wellington bomber)
and on through the entire RAF inventory (if the beer lasted long enough)

Other
Sites

This was the very first place on the entire World-Wide Web that you could
find information about Waltzing Matilda, and I believe it to be the most
authoritative. However, you may like to follow up a few other sites that have
appeared subsequently:

The
Riddle

A riddle that circulates from time to time is 'What was the name of the
swagman?'.

The answer is usually Andy. Why? Because of the line
repeated in the chorus, e.g.: 'Andy sang as he tucked that jumbuck in his
tuckerbag'.

The
Sydney
Morning Herald of 22 November 1999 offered an answer I'd never heard
before, from Tony Winton of Mosman, who claimed that the Swagman's name was
Juan. That's because of the line 'Juan's a jolly swagman'.
The following day, the paper quoted Brian Millett of Yass as saying that this
Juan bloke may have been a cousin of the famous Mexican alluded to in the U.S.
National Anthem - José Canyusee.

Also on 23 November 1999,
the
Herald quoted Alexander Tolnay of Berlin, who said that, reflecting the
origins of the poem, the Swagman really must have been a German rather than
someone of Spanish extraction. So his name would have been
Hans ('Hans a jolly swagman ...').

If you're not Australian, and you've read all the way down to here, then you've
presumably worked out that a lot of Australians don't think life should be
taken too seriously ...

Acknowledgements

A great deal of the current knowledge about this topic is derived from the
work of
Richard
(Dick) Magoffin, PO Box 123, Kynuna, QLD, 4823. Kynuna is near Winton, in
central-west Queensland. Magoffin established the Matilda Expo and Heritage
Theatre at Kynuna in 1994.

Magoffin's work has been used in multiple TV documentaries. His own published
works on the topic include:

In June 2000, Magoffin
'got a gong', specifically a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for "For
service to Australian folklore as an author of bush ballards and songs, and
to the promotion and preservation of Australia's cultural heritage".

Dick passed away on 4 May 2006.

Another source of information is the research of
Harry
Hastings Pearce (1897-1984), documented in 'On the origins of Waltzing
Matilda' (Hawthorn Press, 1971) and 'The Waltzing Matilda debate: replies to
criticism, new verification on the Bold Fusilier, Josephine Pene, etc.'
(1974).

Paterson had kept quiet about the origins of the song throughout his life, but
Magoffin draws attention to Paterson's own succinct account of the song's
genesis in his 'Complete Works', published by Allen & Unwin. 2nd volume,
page 500.

Winton, the 900-person town nearest to the station (if you're American, that's
what you'd call a 'ranch') where the song was written, has used it as the focal
point of its tourism services,
the
Waltzing Matilda Centre.

Over the years, many, many people have contributed many, many snippets
of information that have improved this site. If you find anything on
the site that's wrong or misleading, or if you know something else that I
should be telling people about, or some other sites that I should be pointing
to, please
let
me know!

Administrative
Notes

This document is at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/WM/index.html

The content and infrastructure for these community service pages are provided by Roger Clarke through his consultancy company, Xamax.

From the site's beginnings in August 1994 until February 2009, the infrastructure was provided by the Australian National University. During that time, the site accumulated close to 30 million hits. It passed 50 million in early 2015.